Testing Your Homepage Title Tag
-
It can be a scary thing to change your homepage title tag to get the best results in the SERP while also maintaining your rankings. You obviously want to be irresistible and clickworthy… so how much time do you give before changing it up to test again?
-
Hi Nathan,
I generally A/B test every element I'm considering changing, but due to the nature of meta data this doesn't really work for title testing. I'm therefore pretty meticulous about research and strategy before I make any changes.
I would say that the frequency really depends on your level of traffic. If you have 100,000 visitors a month, I would consider figures reliable and safe (from the point of view of not messing around TOO much) to change it every two months and monitor results. If your traffic is 1,000 visitors a month, you might have to leave the experiment running longer (perhaps 4 months) to get reliable statistics.
Good luck!
-
Ahh, got ya. That's a great question, I'll look forward to reading the replies. I personally don't mess with the home page title tag, but have tweaked some of the blog post title tags. I normally just wait and see if I notice a chance 30 days after I change the title, but nothing real scientific.
-
It's not about a single site of mine in particular - just a discussion thread. I'm curious how often most of the mozzers go about changing their title tags when testing them out. And what best practices they use.
-
Hey Nathan, I think it would depend on what your overall goals are, what the title tag you have now is, etc. If you look at seoMoz's title tag you'll notice they don't have a call to action or anything in their title tag. They have developed the brand.
In regard to your site, have you built a brand for it? Are you selling merch? Is it a blog? Does the content on the home page change often?
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google Analytics Tagging
Hi. I'm trying to figure out a solution to three questions one of my current clients has asked me in regards to Google Analytics tagging, and I'm unsure how to respond. Can anyone help? See below the questions, 1. In Google Acquisition > Overview, their paid media is reporting as "Other". They do not run any Google paid ads. They only run Facebook paid ads. Is there a way to update the source so that it says "Paid" versus "Other" within the default channel? The current solution was advised to create a channel group that the client has to then tick on overtime they want to see this data with the correct labeling. They would prefer to see it in the default. Is it just a matter of going into the *default channel, choosing the "Paid" option, and then specifying the source/medium that contains Facebook, CPC, or referral to be categorized under this channel? Or is it something else? *Aware that changes to the Default Channel are permanent changes and will change how new traffic is classified. 2. In Google Acquisition > Overview > Referral, the clients website is showing up as a referring domain, both the TLD and the subdomain. My understanding is that it should actually be reporting under the "Direct" channel. How do I correct this? Is it just a matter of updating the Direct channel to include those domains? Or do I need to update the settings? The domain's www. http: all 301 redirect to their https://domain.com and https://subdomain.domain.com. Within settings it has been specified as www.domain.com and URL is http:// - also noticed that Bot Filtering has not been checked, assuming this could mess up the analytic data if not define? Do you know? 3. Audience segmentation > The client wants to be able to define it's audience by shopping intent and informational intent. Is there a clear way to do this, for example, by keywords used, e.g. buy, product name, entry (shopping intent), versus e.g. non-purchase intent, entry to the blog, length of time on site (info intent). Would be happy to have a conversation about the last question, since I'm conscious that there are probably multiple ways to define this - thanks. To the group, thank you for readying my questions and helping me with these solutions - your time is appreciated and valued. Sincerely, Amanda
Search Behavior | | AmandaValle.Digital0 -
I changed my home title and meta description but on google, i still see the old title and meta description. Whats the problem here?
I basically changed the title and meta description of my homepage and when i search on google, it still shows old. Whats the issue?
Search Behavior | | prestigeluxuryrentals.com0 -
Does the title attribute affect CTR?
I've been trying to find some research or studies regarding the title attribute on links and if it affects CTR or perhaps another benefit to using it. I know that it's not a factor in search engines and there's some problems with the compatibility of it in various devices and browsers, but looking for any stats that show using could affect your CTR. Would love some actual studies versus opinions, but haven't found any.
Search Behavior | | benmarshall1 -
Dupe Content: Canonicalize the Wordpress Tag or NoIndex?
Mozzers, Here we go. I've read multiple posts for years on taxonomy dupe content. In fact, I've read 10 articles tonight on taxonomies and categories. A little background: I am using Wordpress SEO with the Yoast plugin. **Here is the scenario: We have 560 tags - some make sense - some do not. ** What do I do? Do I not worry about it? Matt Cutts said twice that I should not stress about it, because in the worse non-spammy case, Google may just ignore the duplicate content. Matt said in the video, “I wouldn’t stress about this unless the content that you have duplicated is spammy or keyword stuffing.” (Found Via Search Engine Land - http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-duplicate-content-wont-hurt-you-unless-it-is-spammy-167459). Do I NoIndex,Follow the Tags? Yoast and a Moz post both say I should NoIndex and Follow the Tags. From the post: "Tag, author, and date archives will all look too similar to other content. So it does not make sense to have them indexed." BUT! **The tags have been indexed for YEARS! And both articles go onto say **"if your blog has already existed for some time, and you've been indexing tags all along for example, you shouldn't just go deindexing them" (http://moz.com/blog/setup-wordpress-for-seo-success). So do I deindex tags that have been indexed for years? I checked the analytics, and in the past month, tags have brought in less than 1% of traffic, but they are bringing in traffic. Do I canonicalize the tags? Canonicalize the URL from "http://domain.com/blog/tag/addiction/" to "http://domain.com/blog/" ? And if I canonicalize, would you canonicalize to the /blog or to the base /tag? Thanks for any and all help. I just want to clarify this issue. One of the reasons is because I received a Moz Report with a TON of dupe content warning from the tags and categories.
Search Behavior | | Thriveworks-Counseling2 -
Meta description of homepage, changing to latest post
Here's something strange I noticed. The meta description for Engadget when doing a Google search is their latest blog entry. However, if you land on the homepage and view source the page, the meta description is a standard one for their homepage. My first impressions : Wha? How? and Wha? Could it be because it is a "news" site, Google goes "go on, have custom meta descriptions of your latest entry.." Thoughts?
Search Behavior | | Bio-RadAbs0 -
Is a Shorter Page Title Better?
Is there any evidence that SEs give a greater weighting to keyword phrases in the page title if there are less characters? For example: 1. "Buy Silver Bullion" 2. "Buy Silver Bullion Coins Bars Rounds Easily Privately Securely" The key phrase I am trying to optimize for is "Buy Silver Bullion." To my knowledge, current practices would say the 2nd phrase is better optimized since it contains more keywords and it has a few USPs. But is there any evidence that the 1st example would be higher ranked in google for the phrase "Buy Silver Bullion" because it is more focused than the 2nd?
Search Behavior | | nwright0 -
Would you say it is more bennificial to seperate keywords in the title tag tag of a page using a common ( keyword , keyword | Domain.com) or using a hyphen as SEOmoz best practices reccommends (keyword - keyword | domain.com)?
Title tag best practices according to seomoz is the following keyowrd - keyword | brand.com but I have seen some interesting results from using a comma as to a hyphen to seperate keywords as reccomended and wanted to know which method is more crawler friendly.
Search Behavior | | JHSpecialty0